Specific circumstances triggering the subjunctive (3)

The French subjunctive in relative clauses

A common type of subordinate clause is the so-called relative clause. A relative
clause 'restricts' the reference of something or shows how it is 'relative' to other possibilities.
For example, consider the following sentences of English:

Sentence (2) differs from (1) in having a relative clause, "who can help me". If you like, the relative clause
shows what kind of person is being looked for, relative to all the possible people in the world that
might be looked for.

Now, the interesting thing about relative clauses for our discussion is that they may or may
not express an assertion. Sentence (2) may be expressing the fact that there is a definite person who
the speaker knows can help them (or at least, that the speaker knows that there exists such a person).
Or it may be expressing something equivalent to (3):

The implication in (3) is that the speaker is looking for a person that can help them if
such a person exists. But they do not assert that such a person actually exists. In English, speakers
don't always make the distinction between somebody and anybody: somebody
can express either the assertion variant (2) or the non-assertive meaning as in (3). (Though
anybody has to have the non-assertive meaning.)

In French, the distinction is conventionally made
by using the indicative for the assertive meaning as in (2), and the subjunctive for the
non-assertive meaning as in (3).

Here are the French equivalents of (2) with the assertive meaning and (3):

je cherche quelqu'un qui peut m'aiderI'm looking for somebody that can help me (and I know there's such a person)je cherche quelqu'un qui puisse m'aiderI'm looking for somebody (=anybody) that can help me (whether or not they exist)Suggest a change / proposez une modification

Note that a common-- indeed possibly more common-- alternative to the subjuntive in
the second case is to use a conditional:

At the time of writing, Google reports 3,400 occurrences of je cherche quelqu'un qui puisse
versus 11,900 of ... qui pourrait. In addition, many of the examples with ... qui peut
look suspiciously as though they're intended to have the non-assertive interpretation. The use of
the subjunctive in this type of relative clause is alive and kicking, but maybe not as clear cut as many
grammars make out.

Note that the subjunctive is also common with relative clauses introduced by où:

According to Price (2001:378), the subjunctive "must" be used in this case, as with
qui que ce soit qui/que. Google lists 4 occurrences of the phrase
quoi que ce soit que tu fasses, versus a single instance with the indicative (in some song lyrics).
With qui que ce soit qui, the conditional appears to be at least as common
(around 2,000 occurrences of qui que ce soit qui pourrait on Google)
though in many cases appears to have an assertive meaning.

French subjunctive as the equivalent of English 'ever'

We saw in a previous section that the subjunctive
is triggered when the main clause contains a negative. We saw that this can be an actual
negative construction such as (ne) ... pas, (ne) ... rien.
Or it can be a negative adjective, verb or noun such as impossible,
impossibilité, renier, douter
or the word peu used to negate an adjective.

There's also a type of construction where the main clause doesn't have a strictly negative
meaning, but implies a kind of 'partial negation'. The common equivalent is the English word
'ever'. Consider the following:

The main notion being expressed by this sentence is not the fact that the speaker has read
the book, but more the fact that they haven't read other books: it's a kind
of "implied negative". The French equivalent acts as though the main clause contains an
actual negative, and triggers the subjunctive in the relative clause:

Note that English 'ever' has the restriction that it can't be used with a present tense verb.
But the French subjunctive in relative clauses can be triggered by a present tense main verb.
The nearest English equivalent is probably 'really' or 'in fact':

c'est le seul exemple que je puisse imaginerit's the only example I can really think ofil y a assez peu d'enfants qui soient uniquement français au lycée françaisthere are fairly few children at the French high school who are in fact uniquely FrenchSuggest a change / proposez une modification

The equivalent of 'whoever', 'whatever', 'wherever'...

The equivalent of these words in English also typically involve a French subjunctive. A few
QU- words can be combined directly with que and a relative clause with a subjunctive: